THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (EXTENDED EDITION)

Completely underrated. This was, in my opinion, the best of the trilogy. We’d sat for an arse numbing 214 mins of intro, via the Fellowship, and now we get to it.

It has often been criticised for being the middle part and therefore dragging, but for my money, the first two movies make a nice story of their own, and in many ways it’s The Return Of The King that is tagged on.

Short of seven hours of story had rolled on by the time we get to the end of this movie, and though you certainly feel it, I believe that is in fact the gem of this often criticised trilogy.

It is in many ways overly long but I feel that it’s just about paced correctly not to strain the audience to much. A problem which plagues this trilogy are its drawn out sequences which could easily be shortened without losing the impact.

The camera work is also a problem for me. Jackson WILL NOT keep his camera still for 5 minutes. Whenever there’s an epic introduction of a hill, mountain, boat or horse, the camera is flying around, usually on a plane or helicopter.

It’s simply tells me that Jackson had no faith in these stunning environments conveying their own beauty without help form his over direction.

Otherwise this was a well conceived trilogy, and this was its underrated jewel in the crown.